1 . Right at this moment, cockroaches (蟑螂) are doing more to save the environment than you are. A big overstatement? Not if you’ve ever thrown away leftovers from your plate or bought more food than you could manage to cook in a week. You’re part of the food waste problem. But just like cockroaches, you can also be part of the solution.
For example, some farmers in Asia and Africa collect tomatoes in big bags, which means that many of them get crushed out of shape and spoiled before they can be sold or eaten. Switching the bags for large wooden containers already lowers the amount of food lost. Similar successes can and have been achieved in various regions with weather-protected storage facilities.
Let’s focus on China for a second. It’s one of the few countries with an innovative approach to minimizing the environmental impact of food waste. How does it do it? Cockroaches. Millions of the tiny creatures are kept in farms in the suburban districts of big cities. Every morning, food waste is delivered by the tonnes and fed to the cockroaches. Just like tiny pigs, they’re not picky and devour everything quickly. After they die, they’re processed into protein-rich feed for animals such as cows or sheep, or used for cosmetic products and Chinese medicine. It’s an efficient and environmentally-friendly alternative to dumping leftover food in a landfill. Cockroaches aren’t going to solve the problem with food waste, but they can serve as an inspiration for finding other similar solutions on a wider scale.
To avoid food waste completely, improvements are needed at every step of the food supply chain, from production to retail. These take time and are often out of your hands as a consumer. But a meaningful reduction of food waste is definitely in your hands. You can not only buy less and shop more often, but also cut down on animal products.
1. Which link in the food supply chain does paragraph 2 focus on?| A．Processing. |
| B．Packaging. |
| C．Transporting. |
| D．Trading. |
| A．Preserve. |
| B．Transform. |
| C．Grasp. |
| D．Swallow. |
| A．It is widely used around the world. |
| B．It solves the problem with food waste. |
| C．It lessens the environmental impact of pigs. |
| D．It inspires people to seek creative solutions. |
| A．Some solutions to food waste. |
| B．The current state of food waste. |
| C．Cockroaches’ help to save the environment. |
| D．Some factors contributing to food waste. |
Time-honored brands (品牌) have been through a decades — long or even a centuries — long journey. They either serve as a
The total number of
While some brands have sustained their classic style and ancient beauty, others have innovated their products and tapped into digital platforms
3 . Slowness has been a sweeping trend in sustainability. Slow food celebrates local produce and traditional cooking methods; slow fashion is made with a focus on people and the planet. You may have even heard of the slow city, a campaign to restore local cultures and turn cities back to their natural environments.
Slow design developed from the larger slow movement. Although the term was only recently introduced, the idea of thoughtful design looks back to a time when buildings and furniture were made with great craftsmanship (手艺) and by hand-before the mass-produced throwaway furniture took over. You can think of the term “slow” as a celebration of timelessness: both the timelessness of a piece and the timelessness of the relationship between that piece and its owner.
One example of slow design today is what’s been dubbed the brown furniture revival (复兴). Brown furniture refers to the heavy wooden furnishings that were popular in your grandparents’ day but suddenly fell out of style at the turn of the century. Brown furniture is often associated with dark woods, such as trees like mahogany, walnut, and teak, that take decades to reach maturity and true craftsmanship to transform into functional pieces.
Today’s furniture industry is dominated by the $13.1 billion-and-growing global ready-to-assemble(RTA) furniture market. RTA furniture is usually constructed from low-quality fiberboard, which lasts a small part of traditional furniture’s lifespan (寿命).The weight of furniture landfilled in 2018 was 9. 7 million tons, 4. 5 times what was landfilled in 1960.
In a less direct way, the idea of timelessness also lends itself to a lower environmental impact. Besides their demonstrated physical durability, slow materials and design are meant to outlive trends and never be thrown out simply because they’re out of style.
As second-hand shopping becomes more appealing to today’s young generation-because of its low environmental impact and affordability-the brown furniture of yesteryear is making a comeback.
1. Why is the first paragraph written?| A．To explain a new term. |
| B．To present the topic of the text. |
| C．To provide background information. |
| D．To highlight the importance of slowness. |
| A．Known as. |
| B．Mistaken for. |
| C．Compared to. |
| D．Connected with. |
| A．It is out of date. |
| B．It has a long lifespan. |
| C．It is heavy and expensive. |
| D．It has bad effects on the environment. |
| A．Grandparents are buying new furniture. |
| B．The brown furniture will soon be mass-produced. |
| C．The young generation favors second-hand shopping. |
| D．Materials for slow design furniture are more available. |
The impact of pandemic (流行病) on life expectancy (预期寿命), one of the most widely used standards to assess population health, was assessed by a study
The study revealed that women from 15 countries and men from 10 ended up
Reductions in life expectancy overall
All the countries
5 . An exhibition at the Harvard Museum of Natural History is around the theme of food plant disease, using early 20th-century glass models of rotting fruit.
Known as Harvard's "Glass Flowers", the Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants consists of over 4，300 sculptures of plants and plant parts fashioned entirely in glass by the German father-and-son artists Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka between 1887 and 1936. Harvard originally used the models as teaching tools, showing plants' three-dimensional structure and color.
The "Fruits in Decay" shows a collection of models of diseased, rotting, and withering(枯萎的) fruiting plants. The rotting fruit series was intended specifically to educate the public about the danger of plant disease. These models were created by Rudolf, the younger Blaschka, in the early 20th century Harvard botanist Oakes Ames asked him to create these diseased fruit models. And he thought about these as a way to look at what we now call food security-or insecurity.
Though the models were made nearly a hundred years ago, the theme is as remarkable as ever. Most of the illnesses shown on Rudolf Blaschka's plant models still affect today's crops.
"In certain ways, global agriculture is more likely to be harmed than it has ever been to disease threats(威胁), largely due to the widespread practice of planting one crop over large production areas. Less genetic diversity means that crops have less resistance to disease," says Sheng Yang He, a professor at Michigan State University.
Climate change will make plants morevulnerableto disease because warming temperatures disable an important plant defense system against plant disease. Major crop loss from plant disease is already at a shocking 20 to 40 percent. Food security threats from disease will almost certainly become more common so there's a lot to be done about convincing people of it.
1. What are shown on the exhibition?| A．Models of diverse crops. | B．Models of withering flowers. |
| C．Models of rotting plant parts. | D．Models of diseased fruiting plants. |
| A．Oakes Ames. | B．Sheng Yang He. |
| C．Rudolf Blaschka. | D．Leopold Blaschka. |
| A．It convinces people of the food security threats. |
| B．It reminds people of effects of global warming. |
| C．It helps people understand the history of fruit planting. |
| D．It provides people with knowledge of global agriculture. |
| A．Weak and easily hurt. | B．Resistant and protected. |
| C．Defensive and hard to attack. | D．Sensitive and completely destroyed. |
6 . They block entrances, crowd street corners and tip onto their sides, turning a convenient form of transportation into a sidewalk danger that is particularly dangerous for the elderly and disabled.
Now a new California company is working on a possible solution for stopping the chaos caused by electric scooters（滑板车）in cities around the country. The company, known as Swift mile, has unattended charging stations for e-scooters that are designed to serve as a place where riders can park the scooters between rides. The company’s founder, Colin Roche, said the sola-powered charging stations-which can accommodate any brand of e-scooter-are most suitable for areas that are often crowded with the scooters, such as bus and subway stations.
As the weather warms and ridership increases, that struggle is expected to intensify. On one. side of the debate, experts say, are cities whose leaders want to reduce traffic and encourage alternative, environmentally-friendly patterns of transportation to battle against climate change and promote innovation（创新）. Some local officials also fear that restricting scooter companies will cast cities in an outdated light, discouraging technology companies from doing business there in the future. On the other side of the debate are critics who have complained about e-scooter companies for blocking walkways and selling a product whose use has led to thousands of injuries among riders and pedestrians, many of them severe.
Pat Burt, a former Palo Alto mayor who is currently advising Swift mile, said the future of e-scooters could depend heavily on what happens in 2019. Cities have identified the benefits of e-scooters as well as the. drawbacks, which could become existential for the companies. “If the. safety and other problems aren’t addressed, I think cities will restrict them even more, “he said. “But there’s a good chance scooters will be adopted universally if these problems get solved. ”
1. What is the main idea of the first paragraph?| A．The elderly are easy to get injured. | B．E-scooters are difficult to find. |
| C．Many problems are caused by e-scooters. | D．New inventions provide people with convenience. |
| A．Park their e-scooters. | B．Get their e-scooters repaired. |
| C．Have their e-scooters cleaned. | D．Charge their e-scooters for free. |
| A．Attracting more tourists. | B．Reducing traffic pressure. |
| C．Making the roads much safer. | D．Increasing the local company’s profits. |
| A．The public’s attitude. | B．The improvement of traffic. |
| C．The solving of present problems. | D．The benefits of the new business model. |
7 . In the US and Britain, the slogan around colleges was “Save water. Shower with a friend.” Now, Wuhan University has come up with another system for the campus bathhouse. It charges students for the amount of time in a shower. Before entering the bathhouse, students pay for the amount of time they want in the shower with cash or their student ID card. The clock starts ticking the minute the tape is turned on. It pauses when a button is pressed for soap. An integrated circuit (IC) card reader at each tap shows the time. No money, no water. The benefits of the new system can be seen with the old system, which charged 1 Yuan for each person regardless of time in the shower. The university used about 320 tons of water daily under the old system, but only 160 tons now.
Many students use the new system but opinions on it are divided. Some students say it is bad because bathing had become a sort of race. Many people using it for the first time are not sure how long they need to shower. Some might be embarrassed if their time is up and they’re still covered in soap. They have to ask the bathhouse worker to help them buy extra time.
“It’s a flaw in the system that you can not buy extra time on the ID card,” said Ren, a freshman in Wuhan University. The university is also considering some students’ suggestions that they be allowed to pay after they’ve finished the shower. Not surprisingly, some are complaining about losing the hour shower. But many students say the move helps them develop a water-saving sense.
Without the time limits, most students tended to shower for 30 to an hour in the bathhouse.
Some even used the hot water to wash their clothes. “In my experience, 10-20 minutes is enough,” said Dai Zhihua, a third-year student who usually takes 8 minutes.
A similar system has been installed in other universities. Shanghai Normal University introduced it at its Fengxiang Campus in September. The bathing fee there is 0.2 Yuan per minute. One male student responded by setting a record with a two-minute shower.
1. According to the passage, which of the following is NOT true?| A．Students buy the time of their showers. |
| B．The clock times the student’s bathing except when the bather pauses for soap. |
| C．If money runs out, there will be no water. |
| D．Having finished bathing, the student has to pay for it. |
| A．fault | B．advantage | C．pity | D．perfection |
| A．a quarter | B．one third | C．one half | D．two thirds |
| A．the new operation can raise students’ environmental awareness |
| B．the new operation can solve the water crisis |
| C．a similar operation has been set in other universities |
| D．the university has saved a lot of water by using the new system |
| A．Culture. | B．Society. | C．Campus Life. | D．Lifestyle. |
But the younger generation is gradually losing interest and the ability to negotiate a better deal. With fatter wallets, young people who never experienced war or shortages seldom bother to spend 10 minutes at a roadside shop cutting the price of a cell phone cover by 1 yuan. Saving for a rainy day and making good use of every penny---values held dear by older generations---no longer seem necessary. Naturally, bargaining is out, in an increasingly rich society. In this sense, bargaining is a product of poverty.
But in many countries, where residents’ incomes are much lower than those in China, bargaining is not popular at all. I can still remember my failed bargaining attempts in Africa and Indonesia, where vendor(小贩) looked at me in surprise when I sought something at half the price. They shook their heads and stopped the negotiation. Latter I was told by friends who had been staying there for years that bargaining was not part of local commercial culture.
During the years when the planned economy changed into the market economy, it was difficult for ordinary buyers to get a full picture of the product prices at a time when travel was inconvenient, and information spread slowly, adding to the information asymmetry(不对称). Afraid of being overcharged by vendors, buyers turned to the old wisdom of bargaining whenever and wherever they could.
Nowadays, the popularity of e-commerce has improved pricing transparence(透明) to the extreme. With the click of a mouse, all kinds of information on a product can be found, with users’ comments helping new consumers make decisions. With such transparency, overpricing becomes less frequent and bargaining is not a necessity for shoppers. In this sense, reduced bargaining activity can be seen as a sign of China’s progress toward a more mature economy.
1. Bargaining is a skill to _______.
| A．buy high-quality products | B．communicate with foreigners |
| C．avoid paying too much | D．increase sales |
| A．rising incomes |
| B．an increasing number of products |
| C．the value of saving for a raining day |
| D．their fear of losing face |
| A．Bargaining is always popular in poor countries. |
| B．Vendors there are impolite to foreign travelers. |
| C．It’s not avoidable to go abroad without bargaining skills. |
| D．Bargaining is not necessarily related to incomes. |
| A．be kept in the dark | B．know better than seller |
| C．show no concern | D．be well-informed |
| A．Give buyers some tips about how to bargain. |
| B．Bargaining is disappearing with the development of society. |
| C．Make good use of every penny. |
| D．The younger generation is good at bargaining. |
